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The Australian government has launched its new Emergency Alert population warning system, powered by Everbridge.
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Following two years of testing across all Australian states and territories, the Australian government has successfully gone live with its next-generation population warning system to enable police, fire, and emergency services to alert communities to a likely or actual emergency. Everbridge Public Warning is designed to meet the needs of public authorities looking for an advanced warning solution to protect its citizens and visitors, while remaining fully compliant with data privacy regulations.
The company's Critical Event Management Platform is designed to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication modalities, and track progress on executing response plans.
In a statement, Minister for Emergency Management Bridget McKenzie backed Everidge and the capabilities it offers.
“This system is a way for emergency services to warn our community of a pending threat, and we’re pleased that Commonwealth funding is assisting in this risk mitigation which will benefit all Australians,” Minister McKenzie said.
Home to more than 25 million residents and 9 million annual visitors (upon borders re-opening), Australia first introduced its Emergency Alert system in 2009 in response to a series of deadly bushfires. To continue to modernise the service, Australia selected Everbridge’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) Public Warning platform to enable each state and territory – and their regional authorities – to leverage the platform to alert their local citizens and visitors, support first responder communications, and analyse disaster communication effectiveness for subsequent mitigation activities.
Joe Buffone, director general at Emergency Management Australia, added that the system will play a vital role in emergency response management.
“The Emergency Alert system was originally implemented in response to the 2009 summer bushfires and continues to play a vital role in keeping Australian communities safe,” Buffone said.
All Australian states and territories are now live on Everbridge Public Warning following a comprehensive project deployment period. The global software company provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organisations’ operational response to critical events during public safety threats such as terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions.
In the event of a critical situation, such as a bushfire, flood, cyclone, extreme heat, or a terror attack, Australia’s emergency services will send location-based text messages to mobile phones and voice messages to landlines within a precise geo-targeted area, while integrating with social media platforms.
According to Steve Foster, vice president of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania at Everbridge, the company is looking forward support Australia on the advancement of its national warning system.
“With no opting in or app download required, Everbridge’s Public Warning platform delivers emergency alerts to at-risk populations on a nationwide scale to help keep Australian residents and visitors, when borders reopen, safe during bushfires and other critical events. Every country can benefit from a modern software platform that reaches everyone in times of crisis,” Foster added.
Everbridge’s platform combines mobile phone broadcast, location-based SMS, address-based and group-based multi-channel alerting technologies in order to provide critical event management capabilities across a broad range of threats including natural disasters, terrorism, cyber attacks, and other security events.
The company recently announced a new patent for its revolutionary work in enabling end-to-end multimedia population alerting capabilities. The patent – one of more than 160 overall across Everbridge’s suite of population alerting solutions – highlights the need for delivering alerts through a combination of 5G, cell broadcast, and multimedia.
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